FineReader: PDF Scanner & OCR Reviews

FineReader is an indispensable tool for anyone who wants to preserve their writing. I’ve been using this scanner for about a year now and it has made my life so much easier. I do a lot of journaling and I have tons of handwritten notes that I feared would get destroyed and FineReader has allowed me to preserve all of it by scanning it into a digital copy and emailing it to myself as a PDF. It’s easy and I’ve never had a single issue with it. It’s worth every cent. It puts my mind at ease by knowing that even if my hard copies get ruined, all my hard work is still backed up on my computer. Highly recommended!

If all you’re looking for is the ability to occasionally scan a PDF/file/image to attach to an email, this works great. However, if you’re using it everyday for something like scanning receipts, there are too many steps to go through for each receipt. Each receipt requires that you scan, crop, name, upload for OCR (which asks to choose the language every time, then wait while the document uploads), then when the OCR is done, save it to my iCloud account (which has multiple screens to jump through to find the iCloud Drive). It’s too time consuming for me. If it was $8 a year, I might not complain, but I won’t renew my subscription unless they offer a way to make these manual steps automatic each time I scan a new receipt.

I gave this 2 instead of 1 star only because while it was really neat to see how this works, and it seems to do it as well as advertised, that’s all you get for free. This is probably a great app but I’ll never know because I never got an opportunity to properly try it before I was locked out in true bait and switch fashion.

One is lead to believe that the user is limited to scanning/storing 5 pages at a time. In truth you get 5 attempts to scan and item and that’s it. I first fumbled with my phone while trying to hold a book open long enough to take a decent photo. Then by the time I figured out which type of text to convert it to, after a bit of trial-and-error, I discovered I had used up my 5 tries and felt like a total sucker.

You can play then you have to pay. So enjoy those 5 minutes.

This used to be my scan app. I have used it for years. I scanned everything. I used the free version, it displayed ads, no problem. Then it updated and it only allowed 10 scans total. Not 10 each document, but 10 pages total. I have documents that I scanned over 10 pages that are now gone forever. It was nice while it lasted, I would buy FineReader , but they want to subscribe monthly or yearly or whatever. Good thing iPhone now allows you to scan documents via the “Notes”. Open notes and use camera and it has “Scan Notes”. It will make a file on your iPhone for free. The FineScanner app is irrelevant. Sad, I liked it and it was very useful, but a 10 page limit has ruined FineReader .

This latest version is a dumbed down piece of junk, slipped together with its only intent to make you PAY for the earlier ease of use I came to applaud. Stay away. Do NOT upgrade to this version. A slap in the face to us by crass consumerism, this only leads me to believe the company was purchased by someone else who saw an opportunity to stick their grubby hands in our wallets.

*********. UPDATE *********. April 30, 2019

There has been a greatly improved release that, so far, eclipses the earlier release and shows great promise of flexibility for the user. Kudos to the developer and team for an app worthy of my Top Ten Best.

As a university student, I have access to many books. However, once I graduate, I won't enjoy such access anymore. I downloaded FineReader as a way to keep those books without having to purchase them in the future, as they can be extremely expensive. Although $60 may seem hefty for an app, it is much cheaper than paying hundreds of dollars for a few books.

Edit: I've had FineReader for a few years and I still use it. Highly recommend.

Really a nice app, so I'm willing to put up with some quirks. One of them: since it snaps pix automatically, there are some misses. You can't delete these from a doc until after you've saved it, which is not intuitive. On the other hand, the advantages of auto scans far outweigh the disadvantages.

I use FineScanner to upload scans to Dropbox, which works great. The scans are excellent quality and you can tweak color, quality, and contrast.

I don't know how FineScanner compares with other scanner apps because it has always done what I needed it to do and done it well, so I haven't felt the need to look elsewhere.

Many times I will be working with a PDF file, but I want to make many edits to it in word, such as find and replace. I open my PDF file in the FoxIt PDF app, or any app, then click the export icon, and then select ABBYY.

Right now I am subscribing at $9.99 per year. This is also great for downloading PDFs and then having them text recognized. There is a limit to 100 pages of cloud recognition. If they could change that to 1,000 pages, I would appreciate it.

The crop screen is poorly designed; it’s too easy to double tap and reset the cropping guide. Furthermore, accidentally tapping “apply to all” will ruin all your previous work (deleting 300 pages worth of manual cropping is NOT fun).

The “edit” interface is even worse. Try selecting pages to rearrange the order; it’s a disaster with inconsistent and unexpected behavior that will basically ruin all the work you put into scanning a book. This happened to me on two different book scans (the second time being extra careful). Terrible terrible UI design. Shameful.

Bottom line: FineReader was designed by some low paid devs who don’t care about the quality of their work. I will be cancelling payment and looking elsewhere. I would advise you do the same.

Trying to downsize but FineReader has issues. Shows “processing” for days same document and the only way to stop it is to delete the document. Also I have set up my mail but it continuously asks me to set up my mail when I try to email to myself. Hope there is a way to fix this!
Also, if I try to scan a document while the “processing” wheel is spinning, FineReader closes. I was forced to delete a document I no longer have a hard copy of.

I don’t find that application technology is all that functional or life changing very often, but I can honestly say that since a friend introduced me to ABBYY FineScanner, I would not be as effective without it. It saves me time from having to sit at a laptop or digital sender in order to submit critical documents. It is the single most used application on my phone when I have to quickly scan and submit documents for any reason. Well done!

So far so good, support replies are good if you have an issue. My take is it’s good on an iPad Pro, book scan feature a little slow; need to scan in small batches, sometimes it doesn’t recognize optimally despite lightning adequately etc. Basically scanning books and getting the pages flattened perfectly is an imperfect thing today. But it tries really hard, and it rivals a $20 scanner so can’t complain. There’s some UI scrolling improvements needed here. Also need a feature to re-crop after processing.

I was in a jam this morning and needed a good OCR app quickly, so I checked the PC Magazine review and this was the best rated app on there.

I downloaded FineReader , scanned my document and it converted what was only an image into Word format for me in seconds. This saved me a ton of time I would have had to otherwise spend typing the document manually and also “saved my bacon!”

I will definitely buy the “Pro” version. All apps should work this well, this seamlessly and this easily.

If you want a simple scanner this is not for you. It tries to get you to upgrade constantly and has all kinds of features I don’t need. Maybe for some people but not for me.
At the very end of my simple insurance card scans they show a thumbnail of the documents and the word - recognize. What? Do I recognize my own documents? Yes. I tapped it ... it looked like it was going to re-format the document. So I didn’t recognize it! Now. Did it go through? How long do I have to spend sending a four page insurance card to the person billing me. I reduce the stars to one!

Absolutely amazing app all in one stop you can scan documents rename them save them email everything works perfectly you can also sign in edit PDF documents converted and list goes on and on I am so glad I got it it works for everything and so worth the money,Keep everything organized and labeled tagged easy to find easy to use just big thank you

I am very pleased with FineReader and it came highly recommended from a coworker. (I have also downloaded the business card scanner). I have recommended FineReader to other people and also so convenient not to need to use a scanner. I can create and email PDF files no matter where I am, even in the middle of the desert. + 1 !!
I like the new features that have been added as well, especially annotating.

Today I scanned my document to store in iCloud. With a touch of a button ( open up your camera on an iPhone) take a picture, crop the picture to your desired results and now your document is stored in a safe place and can be sent from a smart phone either by email or text message given your choices in regards to what device you have.

It’s auto capture feature made it super fast and easy to scan 20 + docs in about a minute or less compared to the other app where I had to align the page and take the picture myself and it’s free sample amount to scan was higher than any other app before asking me to purchase! I would and probably will pay for the full version since it was so wonderfully easy! I love it! Great first impression!

I use finescanner for my dissertation archival work. I recommend FineReader but would add the important proviso that when uploading large numbers of documents make sure that the files go through! I have had corrupted pages in scans, while I had to restore a backup of the files when old scans were not loading on my iPhone. So take precautions when using for intensive scanning!

And you will get almost flawless OCR!!

I use this app (iPhone) and the full Mac version regularly as my research involves computational text analysis (big data), pulling from 100s of old texts that have yet to be digitized.

I have been using this app for a year and half and have found it far more accurate than the current version of Acrobat Pro and experience with older versions of omnipage.